The hospital that serves downtown Vancouver will be a crucial resource when the big earthquake comes — if it doesn’t fall down. “In terms of geological time, we’re overdue,” says Bonnie Maples, an architect and director of capital assets for Providence Health Care, which runs St. Paul’s. “It is a matter of when, not if. It’s like a time bomb waiting to go off but we don’t know what it’s set for.

“This is the place that people are going to go to in an earthquake. Our emergency plan has to have steps to it. The first step is you have to survive.”

Providence hired a seismic-engineering firm to create a model predicting what would happen to St. Paul’s Hospital in the event of a magnitude-7 quake with an epicentre 15 kilometres away.

“What it shows is that the building will wiggle like mad and practically tear itself apart,” Maples says. “We just pray we get the new building up before it happens.”

Last week, Premier Christy Clark announced upgrades to St. Paul’s, including a new building. But details and a business plan won’t be ready for release until 2014, and no upgrade funding was attached to Clark’s announcement.

“No one can predict when, or if, an earthquake will occur and what exact impact an earthquake will have on buildings and services,” said health ministry spokeswoman Michelle Stewart. “The majority of in-patient beds at St Paul’s are not located in buildings in need of seismic upgrading.”

It will take five years to finish upgrades once final approval is received, Maples says. “We have to do something,” Maples says, “and the question is, how long can we wait to do it?”

The original building of St. Paul’s, in the hospital’s central section, was completed in 1913 with little concern for seismic activity. That building houses the emergency department and “has virtually no lateral resistance,” Maples says.

The north and south wings, built in the ’30s, would meet 10 to 20 per cent of today’s standards of seismic resistance, Maples says. Made of early reinforced concrete, the structures are “very brittle,” she says. Interior walls are covered in clay tiles. “They will shatter in an earthquake and be very dangerous,” Maples says.

Throughout St. Paul’s, there is a “significant possibility of at least partial collapse,” she says.

The worst-case scenario of a heavily damaged St. Paul’s cut off from the outside by collapsing bridges into downtown Vancouver could occur, she says, noting that California’s 1989 magnitude-7 Loma Prieta quake caused a viaduct, double-decker highway and a bridge to collapse. Should damage force closure of St. Paul’s emergency department, patients would be moved into prearranged locations, including schools. Hospital staff would bring all movable equipment to the patients.

“That’s all we would be able to do,” Maples says.

The planned upgrade to the building that houses emergency will be expensive, complicated and difficult, Maples says. “It’s very messy, dirty work. You can’t just do it in little bits and pieces while doctors are treating patients.”

Upgrading would go far beyond bolting down generators and putting in flexible joints in high-pressure steam joints. “Base isolation” is planned, with the whole building lifted off the foundation and shock-dampers installed between the building and foundation.

“There are a number of ways of undertaking seismic upgrading within existing buildings and the concept plan and business-case work will examine those in detail to identify the best way of upgrading the hospital with the least impact to patient care,” the health ministry’s Stewart says.

But Clark’s claim that the 2012 budget contains $500 million that would fund the upgrade gives people “false hopes,” says NDP health critic Mike Farnworth.

“There is no $500 million in this year’s budget,” Farnworth said, adding that the Liberals kept putting off seismic upgrades to schools, and eventually cut the number of schools to upgrade. “The only thing this government is committed to is trying to increase its popularity in the polls. We are 10 months away from an election.”

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